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'Digging through the debris'

T Bone Burnett looks back -- and forward

By Todd Leopold
CNN

T Bone Burnett, who produced the soundtrack "O Brother, Where Art Thou" and many other albums, has two new releases of his own.

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(CNN) -- Tips from T Bone Burnett: Less is more. Be true to yourself, and to God. Let the music speak for itself.

Oh, and get out of the way when "Death" comes calling.

That latter recommendation comes with Burnett's experience recording the soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou," one of the singer-songwriter-producer-label mogul's many projects over the last three decades. He was listening to bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley play the song "O Death," which became one of the soundtrack's centerpieces, accompanied by banjo.

At the same instant, Stanley -- wrestling with the haunting ballad, which he'd sung countless times -- and Burnett, sitting with his cohorts (and "O Brother" filmmakers) the Coen brothers -- had the same idea: Perform the song a cappella.

"He did it one time, and that's what's on the record," says Burnett in a phone interview from Los Angeles, California.

It's that purity of voice that Burnett, 58, often searches for, whether it's in his production work -- Los Lobos' "How Will the Wolf Survive," Elvis Costello's "King of America," the Counting Crows' "August and Everything After," Sam Phillips' "Martinis and Bikinis," Gillian Welch's "Time (the Revelator)" -- or his own work, which spans more than 30 years.

On Tuesday he released two albums: "Twenty Twenty," a 40-song collection of his work, and "The True False Identity," an album of new material. Both albums were released on the label he co-founded with the Coens, DMZ. Burnett is also embarking on a 15-city tour, which kicks off in Chicago on May 23.

'Something wonderful's happening'

Joseph Henry Burnett -- he's been "T Bone" since he was a child -- was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, "in the middle of the military-industrial complex," he recalls. His house was full of music, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong and all kinds of records from his parents' "great collection." "I loved that stuff," he says.

Then rock 'n' roll hit and Burnett was transported.

"My sense of it as a boy was, something wonderful's happening and we should all be grateful for it," he says. In particular, he singles out Sun Records founder Sam Phillips (no relation to "Martinis' " Phillips, a woman who was once Burnett's wife) as "a visionary artist."

"Twenty Twenty" is a compendium of 40 Burnett songs.

Burnett opened a recording studio instead of attending college, and then moved to Los Angeles. After a stint with Delaney & Bonnie's touring band, he hooked up with guitarist Bob Neuwirth, a Bob Dylan colleague. When Dylan put together the 1975-76 Rolling Thunder Revue, Burnett was invited along.

Dylan's aura -- "He has influenced all of us in an extraordinary way," says Burnett -- preceded him. "I knew I was meeting someone," Burnett deadpans. "He had history all about him."

The influence goes beyond Dylan's music, he adds. "He set a standard that is so huge -- to do something that sounds that way, the vibe he conjures, the truth he tells, the havoc he wreaks ... it's deeply inspirational."

Burnett made a few albums with the Alpha Band, then embarked on a solo career. His albums, including "Truth Decay," "Proof Through the Night" and "The Criminal Under My Own Hat," were filled with edgy, lyrically thoughtful songs about time and politics and God.

Burnett, however, says he's merely going with the flow of the music. He has identified himself as a Christian, but dislikes the use of religion to divide.

"This is a good time to be neutral," he says. "The world isn't easily divided into one side right and one side wrong. Both sides [of an issue] may have legitimate concerns. ... I don't think [dividing us] works."

Finding out 'if it's music or not'

For "The True False Identity," Burnett immersed himself in music from a variety of areas, particularly the Mississippi Delta and Haiti. He began with a handful of old songs and pieces of a couple dozen others and "went away and did lyrics for awhile."

Burnett's new CD, "The True False Identity," was influenced by music from Haiti and the Mississippi Delta.

The results are tough-minded and haunting. Behind a murky blues beat, "Zombieland" asserts, "Machines always do what you tell them to do/As long as you do what they say." And "Blinded by the Darkness," with a powerhouse fuzz guitar laying down a groove, proclaims, "Do we want to inject the concept of sin into the Constitution?/Is this really necessary?/Does this not make you somewhat wary?"

His recording method was simple: gather the band around and jump right in.

"Overdubs can be great, but nothing beats being in a room with everybody playing at once," he says. "You'll find out if it's music or not."

Burnett is fond of playing such games in the studio. He's been known to mic a room full of musicians on several channels, then drop channels one by one until he's left with the nakedness of a vocal, spare instrumentation -- and the shadow of everything else in the room.

Even the earlier albums he did with Phillips, now his ex-wife (his current flame is screenwriter Callie Khouri, according to The New York Times), manage to sound elemental despite their baroque arrangements. The more recent works, "Fan Dance" and "A Boot and a Shoe," are positively intimate.

When Burnett looked at his earlier songs, he saw it as a work in progress. For some of the songs of "Twenty Twenty," an anthology that stretches back almost 30 years, Burnett reworked the production on a handful of tunes, mostly songs from "Proof Through the Night," and took care in sequencing the two discs.

"I spent a lot of time figuring out what a retrospective was, for me," he says. "With certain songs, I felt like I wanted to say that now, and others, to not say that now."

He chuckles.

"I'm still digging through the debris of my life," he says.

It hasn't always been easy, he says, living up to his aspirations. But time and experience have done their job.

"When I was a kid, I'd listen to Howlin' Wolf. That's what I wanted, and I couldn't get there," he says. "Now I feel, whatever he was conjuring, I've been around enough of that to do it myself in a way I can feel. ... Now I can do what I do."

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